


Palemance

by Lillow



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Pale, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub, moirail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3066692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillow/pseuds/Lillow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homestuck secret santa gift to tumblr user bokuwaroshia</p>
<p>PreSGRUB Karkat and Gamzee's relationship from first meeting to becoming moirails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palemance

You’d met Gamzee on an online forum about clowns, unsurprisingly.

It was noon and you should have gone to coon six hours ago, but insomnia had taken a firm grip on you, and, seeing as all your friends had done the sane thing and gone to sleep hours ago, you were left bored and slowly finding your way into the weird depths of the internet. At some point you started browsing strange sites that would hopefully bore you so much you just fell right to sleep.

The one on clowns with two trolls chatting on it had looked just uninteresting enough to knock you right off.

So you logged in.

As the troll counter at the top of the page went from 2 to 3, you began scrolling from the top of the text, skimming to catch up.

It seemed one purple blood and an indigo were discussing Subjugglator religion or whatever. The indigo (by the name of heftyNegotiator) was arguing that the religion was totally stupid and attempting to debunk the entire thing. The purple (by name of terminallyCapricious) seemed to be defending it avidly and you could only guess that he was some sort of zealot and you were surprised to find him holding his own very well in between his honking.

You found yourself to be quite the opposite of bored as you skimmed down the wall of blue and purple text.

As you caught up to the chat, you saw heftyNegotiator get incredibly frustrated and fuck right of as the troll counter went from 3 to 2. It seemed to take the purple troll a moment to realize half his audience had left as his insightful rant continued for quite a few lines of text before coming to an abrupt halt.

He didn't miss a beat before more text appeared on the screen.

TC: aW tHeY dOnE gOnE aNd LeFt. :O(  
TC: HoNk  
TC: sO  
TC: wHaT tHe MoThErFuCk AbOuT yOu?

You stared at the screen for a moment as your eyes flicked up to the troll counter. Yep, still 2 trolls a trolling. That meant he was talking to you.

Your hands slowly reached for your keyboard.

CG: WHAT THE MOTHERFUCK ABOUT ME?  
TC: dO yOu HaVe AnY tHoUgHtS oN tHe MaTtEr?

You had plenty of thoughts. You always had thoughts. Too many thoughts, in fact.

And thats how you started discussing clown religion at one-thirty in the afternoon with a purple who, just for their color alone, you should not have been talking to.

At some point you realized the soothing effect your conversation was having on you and you asked, at around five-thirty and your conversation was winding down, for his name.

TC: GaMzEe MaKaRa  
TC: aNd yOu?

You paused.

Then typed.

CG: KARKAT VANTAS  
TC: hOnK :O)  
TC: ThAtS a NiCe NaMe

You blushed (why did you blush, it was just a compliment) and awkwardly said goodbye before logging off and just...shutting down your computer completely. You hurried yourself to coon.

You actually fell asleep, and when you finally dragged yourself out of your recupracoon sometime around midnight, you turned your husktop back on to discover someone had sent you a friend request not thirty minutes after you had shut down your computer.

It was from Gamzee.

You must've been some kind of stupid to accept it, because a blood freak like yourself really should not be friends with a, potentially very dangerous, highblood like Gamzee.

In the beginning you didn't chat much. It wasn't for lack of effort on Gamzee's part, he sent you a message at least once every few days, rather intent on striking up a conversation with you.

You replied once or twice and chatted for a few minutes before excusing yourself and not talking for a while. He was ever so patient and never seemed to get upset about your rude conversation ditching. He seemed genuinely interested in you and participated in your brief chats with much gusto.

Then one night you came down with a fever, and was forced to stay in your coon as much as possible by your crabdad. He was nice enough to bring you your husktop and your favorite romance novels on a little table, but not moving for an entire night (when you tried you got dizzy) left you a little stir crazy. You tried reading, but honestly you'd read those books at least a hundred times and knowing what was going to happen just wasn't stimulating enough.

A bleep came from your husktop and your attention gladly latched itself onto it. It was a message from Gamzee.

TC: hEy BrO  
TC: dId YoU kNoW tHaT dOcTeRrOrIsTs HaVe To Do AlMoSt FoUr MoRe SwEePs Of ScHoOlFeEdInG tHaN uS?

You found your fingers on the keys before you could stop yourself.

CG: YES.  
TC: wOw ThAtS a LoT.  
TC: yOu GoTtA hAvE sOmE sOrT oF mIrAcUlOuS mOtHeRfUcKiNg PaTiEnCe FoR tHaT.  
TC: mAyBe I sHoUlD uP aNd GeT mY aPpReCiAtIon On FoR tHeM.  
CG: DO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT GAMZEE.

You hadn't meant to be snappy. Well, more snappy than usual, but you weren't feeling good and gogdammit how does Gamzee not know such simple things? He's so pitiful (you didn't just think that no you did not).

Your conversation went from there and as you talked about any mindless thing you could, at some point you realized you had been conversing for almost four hours. The time had simply slipped through your claws and you couldn't really find it in yourself to mind too much. You were just glad Gamzee hadn't made a big deal out of it.

Eventually you let it slip that you were sick and you got a lot of frowny clown faces and sad honking and you told him to shut his stupid face. It was too close to pale for your tastes.

You liked to to assume he was just a weird guy who probably got closer than social convention would allow. You could easily blame it on soper and an absentee lusus on his part. Yeah, that worked.

At some point your eyes got heavy and the screen kept blurring so you said goodbye and shut your computer, sinking back into the warm sopor and falling asleep.

You talked to Gamzee a lot more after that.

Four perigrees later Gamzee suggested you do a video chat, and you freaked out.

You went on some sort of rant you don't even remember but at some point you lied and said your husktop camera was broken. The lens had cracked or something when you dropped it.

He said he understood, and left the subject alone.

Then two weeks later you got a package. A mail drone knocked on your door, and when you didn't answer out of a healthy fear of all things drone, it left it on your doorstep.

You brought the package in and opened the box with a scythe, too impatient for a knife. Inside was a brand-new computer camera. You stared at it for at several minutes before getting on Trollian.

CG: DID YOU SEND ME A CAMERA?  
TC: yEaH bRo  
CG: WHY THE BLISTERING FUCK WOULD YOU DO THAT?  
TC: YoU sAiD yOuRs WaS bRoKe  
TC: So I gOt YoU a NeW oNe  
TC: sO yOu CoUlD uSe It WiTh aLl yOuR bEsT mOtHeRfUcKiNg FrIeNdS  
TC: :O)  
CG: I DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING FRIENDS, GAMZEE  
TC: :O(  
TC: wElL yOu GoT mE

That made you pause. He technically WAS your friend. You had Sollux, but he was an asshole and therefore didn’t count. That left you with Gamzee. Who...wasn’t actually a bad friend. You thanked him using many swear words and creative insults and set up your new camera (and wow, it was such a quality camera, it would’ve taken you sweeps to save up for it, stupid highblood allowances).

After it was set up, you were briefly mortified that you had actually been in the process of USING it. No troll had ever seen your face. Except maybe Sollux, who had probably hacked your husktop cam at least once, the perverted freak, but you couldn’t be sure about that.

And then you decided to fuck all and turned the thing on.

Gamzee accepted the invite almost instantly and his stupid smiling face appeared on your screen. And, wow, he was painted like a clown. You don’t know why you were surprised.

He honked at you. “Hey, best friend!” his voice was wavey, you could only assume he was doped up on sopor at the moment. But when wasn’t he?

“Hi,” you mumbled.

Gamzee gasped, “You don’t actually yell!”

“Yes but apparently you do, so lower your fucking voice.”

The clown nodded and when he spoke next, his voice was a less headache inducing volume.

From there you conversed. For hours. You always seemed to talk for hours. You kind of liked it.

For weeks you both talked every night, for hours on end. As you didn’t get out much, it was interesting to hear about all the things Gamzee did, and he often showed you the many shells he collected on his long beach walks. He would tell you about his random interactions with random trolls and they couldn’t help but remind you that Gamzee was a highblood, and with it came privilege.

From random market vendors lowering prices especially for him, the troll in the candy shop who always had free Faygo for him, just the littlest things that helped you remember that one day Gamzee would grow up and join the fleet. He’d be considered royalty and given a cushy post and probably a ship of his own to fuck around in space with, doing the Empress’s bidding just enough to become massively rich.

You would probably be dead, most likely from culling.

You didn’t like to think about it.

The day he discovered your blood color was the worst day of your life.

You’d been strifing your lusus into an afternoon nap and you hadn’t noticed the small scratch you'd received on your cheek. You got on your husktop and saw Gamzee was inviting you to a video chat.

You didn’t even hesitate to accept and Gamzee’s stupidly smiling face appeared on your screen and wow ok you were probably a little smitten. Just another thing you had to squash down to survive.

His smile disappeared rather quickly. “Uh, bro, are you...bleeding?” he asked, vaguely gesturing at his own cheek. Your hand quickly slapped itself to your face, and you pulled it away to see your ugly shade of red blotted on your fingertips. It didn’t help you had probably only smeared the cut on your cheek some more, making it even more visible with that STUPIDLY HD camera.

You quickly shut down your computer without another word and ran to your lusus, freaking the fuck out.

You didn’t get back on the computer for days.

Crabdad took watch outside, watchful of possible attackers, something he hadn't had to do in sweeps. All you could do was keep your lights out and hope Gamzee hadn’t alerted someone.

It went on like that for a week, and then a mail drone showed up at your house. It was intercepted by your lusus and he brought in the letter carefully held between his claws.

You knew who it was from instantly, as revealed by the sharp smell of old sopor and the sicky sweetness of Faygo. Someone had dripped both of these liquids all over the letter.

You hesitantly took a hold of it and opened it.

The sloppy purple handwriting read as such:

BrO,  
wHeRe HaVe YoU gOnE? i MiSs YoU.  
pLeAsE mEsSaGe Me.  
bUt If yOu DoNt WaNt To, JuSt KnOw I wOnT tElL yOuR sEcReT.  
MaNy MiRaClEs tO yOu,  
GaMzEe

You stared at the paper for a long time, wanting to believe it but knowing it couldn't be true.

At this point, you had nothing to lose, so you booted up your husktop, nervously tapping on your desk with your claws.

You opened trollian and has soon as your icon changed to signify you were "active" Gamzee messaged you.

TG: hI  
CG: HI  
TG: DiD yOu GeT mY lEtTeR?  
CG: YES  
CG: WHO REALLY SENDS LETTERS ANYMORE?  
TG: WeLl WhAt ElSe WaS i SuPpOsEd To Do?  
CG: I DON'T FUCKING KNOW  
CG: NOT CONTACT ME?  
TG: :O(  
CG: DON'T MAKE THAT FACE AT ME  
TG: :O)  
CG: OR THAT ONE  
TG: ;O)

You couldn't help it; you snorted a little. Almost immediately you felt your nerves settle and your shoulders come out of their tense tightness for the first time since you last talked to Gamzee.

You pulled the conversation back on topic, and somehow Gamzee actually managed to assure you that he hadn't told anyone your secret. Nor did he have any intentions to do so.

And he called your blood miraculous.

Then you started freaking out for other reasons.

That brought you to now. It had been nearly half a sweep since you'd worked things out with Gamzee, and a whole sweep since you had both first met on that chat room.

There was a knock on your door. A mail drone. Your lusus answered.

He then brought you a large and very thin package poorly wrapped in glistening purple paper. You quickly opened it, your eyes skimming the contents.

And then you dropped it.

Now laying on your floor was a poster board. On it were several pink faygo wrappers arranged in a diamond pattern and attached with sopor. The whole thing was dripping with sopor.

Below the diamond, written in familiar alternating letters were the words:

"wIlL yOu Be My MoIrAiL?"

You practically ran to your husktop as crabdad picked up the poster to find a suitable place on the walls to hang it.

CG: I GOT YOUR POSTER.  
TG: hOnK?  
CG: MY ANSWER IS YES.  
TG: HoNk :O)  
CG: BUT FOR THE RECORD I THINK YOU'RE STUPID  
TG: nAh BrO  
TG: I hApPeN tO tHiNk ThIs Is OnE oF tHe SmArTeSt ThInGs I eVeR dOnE.  
CG: OH SHUT UP  
TG: :O)  
TG: <>  
CG: <>  


And that's when you realized that everything might actually be ok.

You didn't even try to stop your smile.


End file.
